Oct. 8th, 2006 08:48 am
the departed
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toastykittenA different perspective on the movie.
I watched the movie last night. I frankly, just ignore the racial stuff as much as possible, because otherwise thinking about it makes me distracted and drives me crazy. Yes, the one black guy dies, but you knew that was coming, right? The few Chinese people who are supposed to be mobsters working for the Chinese government speak American accented Cantonese instead of Mandarin and don't do anything. Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello is a racist mob boss, his racism made explicit by the first scene where he uses the n-word. (Is it really necessary to do that? Some would argue, yes, it is, because we need to see that Costello doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks, but by the time we get to the part where he rants against the Chinese mobsters, I'm starting to think it's not that it's necessary, it's that it's fun for the writers and directors to have someone to express their prejudices in a way that won't allow other people to call them racist because a bad guy is saying the words. I'm going to call them racist anyway. Frankly, if they were going for gritty realism, the mobsters would have shot him in the middle of that rant. Just saying.)
So aside from that stuff, I will call the movie good but not better than the original. Mark cannot say anything because he doesn't remember the original, but I had the original running through my head the entire night. Some of the lines were lifted completely from the original; the plot elements remain the same, but the order and execution are different.
The original was much more concise, and the acting tended to happen more inside the head of the characters rather than the outside. I thought this version could have cut out a half-hour of exposition. One of the things I loved about the original were all the quiet moments - Andy and Tony sitting in the same shop with the headphones, the first moments when Andy decides to call Tony and tap some Morse code, etc. There are very few moments like that in this movie; everything is made explicit and violent, especially on Leondardo DiCaprio's side. I thought most of the major actors did a great job with what they had - I didn't like watching Jack Nicholson because he was essentially playing the Joker and not a mob boss. Hello, you should have gone with John Goodman! Or maybe that guy from History of Violence. The psychologist is used more here, but not in a way that I liked - she's essentially nothing more than a foil for both characters and doesn't really have anything else to do besides react. Geography is really central to the plot here, more than it is in the Hong Kong movie, and the issues of race are more prevalent, but the director doesn't really go anywhere with the race issue besides Racism! Bad!
Writing this makes it seem like I enjoyed the movie a lot less than I did, but I actually did enjoy it a lot. Reading ReAppropriate's entry this morning just made me realize there were a lot of things I hadn't thought about while watching it, because I tend to compartmentalize those issues a lot. I really like what they did with Mark Wahlberg's character, who doesn't seem to have an analogous character in the original. But he's funny. This one has a lot more humor in it than it did in the original. It was actually quite interesting to see this with a packed audience - I could hear them gasping at the high-tension points. The ending is mostly the same, but I thought it could have ended a lot sooner than it did.
I watched the movie last night. I frankly, just ignore the racial stuff as much as possible, because otherwise thinking about it makes me distracted and drives me crazy. Yes, the one black guy dies, but you knew that was coming, right? The few Chinese people who are supposed to be mobsters working for the Chinese government speak American accented Cantonese instead of Mandarin and don't do anything. Jack Nicholson's Frank Costello is a racist mob boss, his racism made explicit by the first scene where he uses the n-word. (Is it really necessary to do that? Some would argue, yes, it is, because we need to see that Costello doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks, but by the time we get to the part where he rants against the Chinese mobsters, I'm starting to think it's not that it's necessary, it's that it's fun for the writers and directors to have someone to express their prejudices in a way that won't allow other people to call them racist because a bad guy is saying the words. I'm going to call them racist anyway. Frankly, if they were going for gritty realism, the mobsters would have shot him in the middle of that rant. Just saying.)
So aside from that stuff, I will call the movie good but not better than the original. Mark cannot say anything because he doesn't remember the original, but I had the original running through my head the entire night. Some of the lines were lifted completely from the original; the plot elements remain the same, but the order and execution are different.
The original was much more concise, and the acting tended to happen more inside the head of the characters rather than the outside. I thought this version could have cut out a half-hour of exposition. One of the things I loved about the original were all the quiet moments - Andy and Tony sitting in the same shop with the headphones, the first moments when Andy decides to call Tony and tap some Morse code, etc. There are very few moments like that in this movie; everything is made explicit and violent, especially on Leondardo DiCaprio's side. I thought most of the major actors did a great job with what they had - I didn't like watching Jack Nicholson because he was essentially playing the Joker and not a mob boss. Hello, you should have gone with John Goodman! Or maybe that guy from History of Violence. The psychologist is used more here, but not in a way that I liked - she's essentially nothing more than a foil for both characters and doesn't really have anything else to do besides react. Geography is really central to the plot here, more than it is in the Hong Kong movie, and the issues of race are more prevalent, but the director doesn't really go anywhere with the race issue besides Racism! Bad!
Writing this makes it seem like I enjoyed the movie a lot less than I did, but I actually did enjoy it a lot. Reading ReAppropriate's entry this morning just made me realize there were a lot of things I hadn't thought about while watching it, because I tend to compartmentalize those issues a lot. I really like what they did with Mark Wahlberg's character, who doesn't seem to have an analogous character in the original. But he's funny. This one has a lot more humor in it than it did in the original. It was actually quite interesting to see this with a packed audience - I could hear them gasping at the high-tension points. The ending is mostly the same, but I thought it could have ended a lot sooner than it did.
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